The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, follows the journey of Henry Flemming during the Civil War, the bloodiest war in the United States' history. The exact position of Henry's regiment is left mysterious, though clues are given throughout the book. The book focuses not only on the war, but moreover on Henry's ideas of it, and how his ideas change over the course of the book. That mostly involves how he first feels about war, which is confusion; to realizing that war is hell, which leads him to a state of fear when a second charge of the enemy arises; and then on to struggling to find the courage to continue fighting. Henry's ideas changed, and as a person, so did he. He obtained the bravery and patriotism to keep fighting, and he also passed those traits on to his comrades in arms. By doing this, he started thinking of himself as being a man, rather than a lost boy, as he had once thought of himself.

American author Stephen Crane; detail of a paintin...

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Crane's Red Badge of Courage undertakes the task of portraying war and a boy's ever-changing ideas by using extreme detail, a southern dialect, and a gripping plot.

Crane's writing style is very descriptive. He can paint a glorious picture inside the reader's mind, then turns around and uses his knowledge of war to obliterate any glory that was ever there at all. His use of detail helps to keep the reader involved in the book. It was one of the few things that allowed me to read it without falling asleep or putting the book down. The use of detail is a double edged blade though, not only does it cut into your mind with its gripping scenes, but also into your patience because of the extreme boredom...

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... Crane learned most of the information for The Red Badge of Courage by talking to veterans of the Civil war as said here: Though Crane had never seen a battle when he wrote the novel, he had read about them; he had talked with veterans and had studied history under a Civil War ...

... Red Badge of Courage:The First True American War StoryWhen someone comes up with something new to say and a new way to say it, that someone is called an original. Stephen Crane's A Red Badge of Courage is a work so rare, that people have and will keep ...

... Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane uses color imagery and color symbols in The Red Badge of Courage . Green represents youth, red is a symbol of Henry Fleming's mental visions of battle, and gray is used as a symbol for death. The colors are subtle representations of ...

... of death. They do death's job. Gray is the subtle representation of and one's perception of events. In conclusion, Stephen Crane uses a great number of color imagery in his novel, The Red Badge of Courage . Crane's deliberate use of color symbols and color imagery allows a ...

... a long time. His works will continue to have a lasting effect on literature as we know it today. References: Crane, Steven The Red Badge of Courage e-book courtesy of Project Gutenburg (www.gutenburg.org) Nagel, James. Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism. University Park: Pennsylvania State ...

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